Tender is the Knight (23 page)

“Well,” she said slowly. “I
do not want any… meat.”

He understood completely. 
“Of course not, my love.  And I swear to you, I shall buy you a thousand goats to replace the one so erroneously lost.”

She giggled because he was serious. “I
do not want that many,” she said. “But I would like….”

“What?” he asked eagerly.

She chewed on her lip in a gesture reminiscent of Clive. “Sweets.”

“Sweets?
What kind?”

“Honey cakes with butter.
Bread with jam. And cow’s milk to drink.”

Dennis
kissed her on the forehead, feeling so much relief that he was nearly weak with it. “You shall have all you can eat and more. Anything else?”

She gazed up at him with her golden brown eyes, dark-rimmed but sparkling. “Yes.”

“What?”

“I want you to sit here with me while I eat.”

Dennis’ entire body softened with warm, fluid emotion. He could not remember ever feeling such happiness and he kissed her forehead again, and then her hand. “Of course, madam,” he said softly. “I would have it no other way.”

He went to the kitchen and retrieved her food himself.

***

“Where is
Dennis?” Thomas asked.

“He went to get me something to eat,”
Ryan replied. Her father looked so very tired and she smiled wearily at him “It looks as if you could use something to eat, too.”

Thomas shook his head, pulling up a small three-legged stool that was propped against the hearth and plopping his aging body upon it.  The room was fragrant and warm, the sunlight from the cold day pouring softly through the window. 

“I do not need any food,” he muttered. “It is enough to know that you are going to be well again. That is all the sustenance I require at the moment.”

There was something very dark to his manner, something that caused
Ryan’s smile to fade. Her father seemed terribly distressed. “What’s wrong, Da?”

He grunted. “Wrong? Nothing is wrong.”

“You are lying,” she said flatly. “I know very well when something is troubling you.  What is it?”

He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. For a moment, it looked as if he might actually say something of value, but he simply smiled and patted his daughter’s leg.
“Nothing that should concern you.  I… I would speak with your husband, though.”

“About what?”

“That is our business.”

“Anything that involves St. Austell involves me.”

Thomas cocked an eyebrow at her. “Is that why you disobeyed your husband to help the wounded during the siege?”

She tilted her chin defi
antly. “It was my duty as the Lady of St Austell, but…”

“Christ, then it’s true,” Thomas exclaimed softly. “You were indeed being obstinate.”

“I was assessing the situation, as is my duty and my right.”

Thomas put up a hand.
“Enough, Ryan. I am not going to rehash this argument with you. But you really should have listened to your husband. You damn near lost your life being someplace you should not have been."

Ryan
eyed her father, letting the subject settle. She did not want to pursue her history of disobedience, so she shifted the focus. “What are you going to talk to Dennis about?”

Thomas snorted and stood up.  Kicking the stool back to its place beside the sooty hearth, he wagged a finger at her. “That is between your husband and me. Truly,
Ryan, it does not concern you. Do not worry over it.”

“It has to do with Miguel, doesn’t it?”

Thomas good humor faded. He crossed his arms, paced about, and seemed to be haphazardly heading toward the door. But he did not make it. “Why would you say that?”

She shrugged, made difficult with her bound shoulder
and torso. “A hunch, I suppose. I do not know, really.  Does it truly have something to do with Miguel?”

Thomas inhaled a long, slow breath.  He lifted his shoulders, though weakly. “St.
Austell has been thoroughly thrashed,” he said quietly. “You have been wounded. Miguel isn’t entirely to blame.”

Ryan
was puzzled. “What do you mean? He was the only one to attack the fortress, or so I was told. Did he have help?”

Thomas’ mouth twisted ironically.
“Help? I suppose you could say that. What matters now is that your husband must know the forces at work behind it. I have….”

Thomas never had time to finish his sentence. Suddenly, the chamber door flew open and Douglas de Lohr stood in the frame, his broadsword wielded high. It seemed as he were poised on the brink of battle and his cold expression assessed the room in an instant. 

Startled, Thomas had virtually no time to react before Douglas’ sword plunged deep into his chest, sending him to the floor in a heap of instant death. Seconds passed with lightning speed, frozen frames of horrifying images, and somewhere above the mayhem Ryan heard her terrified, high-pitched scream.  

By the time Douglas turned to her, intending to ram her with the broadsword,
Dennis was in the doorway. It was obvious that he was startled by the scene, but not senseless. The food in his hands crashed to the floor as he threw himself at Douglas, disarming the knight and using his own sword against him in one swift, deadly movement. Ryan was still screaming, visions of her dead father and a dead knight on her chamber floor, as Dennis rushed to her side.

He shouted for Clive and Charlotte as he swept his wife into his massive embrace.  Terrified beyond reason,
Ryan continued to shriek as Dennis carried her from the room and ran headlong into Charlotte just as she was exiting her smaller chamber. His sister, armed with a dagger and little else, exchanged a few curt words with her brother before bounding into the chamber fully prepared for a fight, but whether it was defensive or offensive, she was not sure. All she knew was that her brother’s wife was screaming, her brother had blood on his hands, and there were two dead men on the floor of Dennis’ bedchamber. It was a chaotic, gory scene.

The entire castle was jolted with the shrieking. Patrizia, sleeping in the
loft, had been roused by the screams and bolted into the hallway to see what had happened.  Charlotte’s bellows sent her back into the chamber to bolt the door. Clive was the next man into the upper gallery, leading a host of St. Austell soldiers and Dennis nearly knocked him over in his haste.

“Christ,
Dennis, what goes on?” Clive demanded.

Ryan
was gasping and Dennis was pale. “De Bretagne’s own man killed him. I was just in time to save my wife from being slaughtered.” Dennis was furious, frightened. “Hell, I do not know what happened. I need you to come with me; send the soldiers to guard the room and help Charlotte should the need arise. Touch nothing until I return.”

Clive nodded shortly, snapping orders to the men behind him.  He followed
Dennis into Charlotte’s smaller bedchamber and watched as Dennis sat Ryan down upon the rope and wood cot wedged into the corner.  Ryan was verging on hysterics as Dennis put his big hands on her face, forcing her to look at him.

“
Ryan, tell me what happened,” he begged softly. “Love, look at me. Tell me what happened.”

She gasped and swallowed,
tears pouring down her cheeks. “Douglas… he came into the room and… he… Dennis, he killed my father! Why did he do it?”

Dennis
’ heart was pounding. Clearly, he did not understand any of what had just happened. “I do not know,” he said hoarsely. “Did he say anything when he entered the room? A shout, a challenge… anything at all?”

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she wept. “He already had his sword in hand. He just… he went ahead and….”

She could not finish. Dennis looked up at Clive. “What in the name of God is going on? Do you realize what this will look like?”

Clive nodded grimly. “It will look as if you killed
De Bretagne and his knight.” He began to chew his lip furiously. “Christ, Dennis, we have two hundred Launceston soldiers in the bailey. We cannot tell them what just happened. They will destroy us!”

“Perhaps that was de
Lohr’s plan until I thwarted it. Perhaps he’d been ordered to make it seem as if I had killed De Bretagne and then he would kill Ryan to silence her.”

“Then Launceston could declare the treaty null.”

Dennis shook his head, his hands still on his wife. “Launceston has been trying to breach this treaty since the very day I arrived to claim Ryan. Why in the hell did they agree to it in the first place only to go through so much trouble to destroy it?”

“Perhaps they seek only to destroy
us
.”

It certainly made sense.
Dennis, torn with confusion and frustration, gazed up at Ryan and wiped her wet cheeks with his thumbs. 

“One thing is for certain,” he murmured. “They are doing more damage to my wife than they could ever do to me, and for that, I myself am considering breaking the treaty. Nothing would lend satisfaction more than razing Launceston for the pain they have caused her.”

Ryan was close to swooning. The past several days had been more than she could handle.  But she was a strong woman, and she realized very well the implications at hand. It was crucial that she regain her wits, no matter what horrors she had witnessed, in order to help her husband. She struggled with her composure as Dennis gently caressed her.

“Father was going to talk to you before Douglas came along,” she
sniffed. “He would not tell me what it was about, but he hinted that the subject was Miguel.”

Dennis
’ gray eyes grew stormy. “But he did not elaborate?”

She shook her head, feeling weak and nauseous. “He said it was none of my concern. Perhaps he was going to divulge something terrible.”

“Or covert,” Clive snorted. “Maybe de Lohr knew this. Maybe he was simply trying to shut him up.”

Dennis
’ square jaw ticked. “But why go after Ryan as well? He was fully preparing to kill her, too. I saw it myself.”

“Perhaps he was afraid she knew too much.”

“Knew
what
?”

“Mayhap… mayhap he thought Thomas had confided in her whatever he planned to tell me,” he ventured. “If it had to do with Miguel, then maybe it has something to do with that attack upon us.”

Clive lifted an eyebrow. “That the earl was somehow behind it?”

It was as good an answer as any.  Now, the situation was falling in line and starting to make some sense. As the pondered the possibility,
Ryan began to quiver from exhaustion and shock and Dennis gently coaxed her into lying down on the cot.

“One thing is for certain,
Dennis,” Ryan said softly. “I must send the Launceston soldiers home. They will listen to me.”

Dennis
did not like the idea. “Out of the question. “

Her golden brown eyes blazed. “
Dennis, I must. They will not listen to you, nor any of your men. They will wait for my father or Douglas to make an appearance, and that is never going to happen. I will tell them something… anything… to send them on.  They trust me.”

“
You are the lady of St. Austell now.”

“It does
not matter. Most of those men have watched me grow up. They know I am trustworthy.”

Dennis
shook his head, but Clive spoke up. “She may be right, Dennis. It may be our only solution to getting them out of our bailey."

A knock on the chamber door startled all three of them. Charlotte marched in, her gray eyes wide and appearing generally disheveled. She fixed on her brother.

“Do you mind telling me what in the hell is going on?” she demanded. Then she looked at Ryan. “Are you all right, Ryan? Did he hurt you?”

Ryan
smiled faintly at her sister-in-law. “He did not hurt me, Charlotte,” her smile faded then. “But my father….”

Charlotte’s mannish features softened. “He’s dead. There was nothing I could do.
I am sorry.”

Ryan
already knew he was gone, but she dissolved in soft tears again nonetheless.  Dennis kissed her forehead, murmured a few words to her, and then rose. While his wife cried quietly in the corner, Dennis pulled Charlotte and Clive into a private huddle.

“This is not at all good,” he muttered. “Even if
Ryan is able to remove the Launceston army from the bailey, how long do you think it’s going to be before they figure out something is amiss? A week? Two? And then what? Do they attack us with our walls already damaged by the pirate?”

Charlotte was intense, while Clive was drawn and pensive. “We cannot rebuild our walls in a matter of weeks,” Charlotte said frankly. 

Dennis knew that and lifted his eyebrows as if to acknowledge the obvious. “I need options. Do we have any?”

Clive shook his head. He already felt defeat. “If
only we had a bigger army, or a greater authority to turn to for assistance. But the earl is the king’s brother. We would have to turn to the king himself for help and even though the earl and the king do not particularly get along, who is to say if the king would actually support us. ‘Tis an exceptionally delicate situation we find ourselves in, Dennis.”